Chen Zheng was in Gezi Town, and Ming Han was in Luocheng. But Xu Chuan and Xie Wuming had already taken over the Gezi Town investigation, so after discussing the situation with Ming Han, Chen Zheng promptly returned to Junan City.
The mountain air was bitterly cold, and the body hadn’t decomposed beyond recognition. His hair was disheveled, but when the strands were pushed aside, the dead man was unmistakably Dong Jing. There was a clear ligature mark around his neck, suggesting he’d been strangled with a rope. His body was taken to the municipal bureau for an autopsy.
The place where he’d been hidden was close to the restaurants and viewing platforms along the lake. There were tourist footprints nearby. Yet it wasn’t particularly conspicuous. A thick stand of trees separated it from the lakeside path. After nightfall, people watching fireworks over the lake would have noticed nothing beyond the trees unless they walked through the woods.
The forensic examiner established that Dong Jing died sometime between the evening of the eighteenth and the early morning of the nineteenth. Huge crowds had gathered by the lake to watch the fireworks. The thunder of the explosions would have drowned out noises made by the killer behind the trees.
There were many holes in the ground nearby. Before the Spring Festival holiday, groundskeepers had been working there, leaving earthworks unfinished until after the break. The killer had used one of these holes to bury Dong Jing. Tourists walking through the woods by day had since obscured the traces left by the killer and Dong Jing.
The faces of Si Wei, Du Ying, Li Ren, Zhang Pin, and Zhu Xiaodi appeared in Chen Zheng’s mind. Their reunion to celebrate New Year after years apart had never made much sense to him. After learning about Zhu Yi, he’d become even more suspicious of the group’s relationship.
Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi had disappeared. Dong Jing had reserved Shanshui House in advance and seemed to be the gathering’s instigator, but he was now dead. At a resort as large as Weimo Mountain Resort, the only people he was likely to know were his former fellow interns. Including the still-missing Zhu Xiaodi, all five were now suspects.
Thinking of them, Chen Zheng frowned. If Huo Yewei hadn’t been murdered and the police hadn’t started checking resort visitors’ identities, Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi’s disappearances might not have been discovered promptly. And there was that older tour group…
Chen Zheng pressed his aching brow. Right. He had another important reason to return to Junan City: to investigate Mei Rui, who had regained her freedom in Yuanshu Township. She very likely knew Zhu Yi. The person who told Mei Rui’s parents where to find her could only have been Zhu Yi, or so Chen Zheng suspected.
In the early hours of the twenty-third, the special task force held a meeting through the night. Investigators had two main theories about Dong Jing’s death. Either the missing Zhu Xiaodi was the killer, or Zhu Xiaodi had met with foul play as well and the killer was one of the other four former interns, perhaps several of them acting together.
Dong Jing was killed on the night of the eighteenth. Si Wei and the other three were reportedly eating beside the lake and watching fireworks then, leaving them little apparent opportunity. But after the fireworks, they returned to Shanshui House and then went about their own business. They could have killed him afterward.
What truly troubled the investigators, however, was the afternoon of the eighteenth. Du Ying, Zhang Pin, and Li Ren had all been alone. Their explanations were unconvincing. If one of them was the killer, it might have been more likely that Dong Jing died that afternoon.
Had they wanted to kill him during the day but postponed it until night because daylight made it too difficult?
After dawn, both Si Wei’s group and Zhou Xia’s were brought to the municipal bureau for questioning. Learning that Dong Jing had been murdered, Li Ren and Du Ying fell silent, Si Wei turned deathly pale, and Zhang Pin made a tremendous fuss. Zhou Xia’s group, meanwhile, angrily accused police of making trouble and treating them like criminals.
“Sister Zhou, when we last took your statement, you weren’t telling the whole truth, were you?” Chen Zheng approached the still-complaining Zhou Xia.
Her tirade caught in her throat. She stared at him with a frown and instinctively took a step back. Zeng Hong gently steadied her from behind, while Wang Wanjian looked up from his chair.
“W-what do you mean I didn’t tell the truth?” Zhou Xia’s confidence faltered. “What are you getting at?”
“You aren’t just ordinary friends,” Chen Zheng said gently. “You’re members of a mutual-help group formed to find your missing children. Isn’t that right?”
All three froze. Wang Wanjian stood, his lips trembling. Zeng Hong looked away. Like Wang Wanjian, she seldom spoke. Old and timid, she seemed unable to make decisions of her own, always deferring to Zhou Xia.
After a moment’s stunned silence, Zhou Xia burst out, “Yes! Our children disappeared! They’ve been missing for eight years! Why did we have to form a mutual-help group? Because you useless police couldn’t find our children! What are you going to do now? Lock me up because I didn’t tell the truth? Go on, then! Arrest me!”
She threw herself onto the floor and slapped her thighs in anguish. “You can’t catch a single real criminal! All you know how to do is bully ordinary people! Why don’t you tell me when you’re going to bring my child home?”
Zeng Hong hurriedly crouched beside her, and Wang Wanjian came over. They tried to help Zhou Xia up, but she pushed them away, tears streaming down her face. “My Pingping! Where are you?”
Li Zhi arrived and saw that she was in no state to be questioned. He summoned female officers to escort all three to a rest area and help them calm down. Chen Zheng shook his head and shifted his attention to Du Ying’s group.
Du Ying raised her head, her eyes deep and dark. In He Mei’s photograph, she and Zhu Yi could almost have been mistaken for one person at first glance. But now, as Chen Zheng looked directly at Du Ying, he could find no trace of resemblance to Zhu Yi in her face. They were entirely different people.
“What do you want to ask me, Officer Chen?” Du Ying said. “I don’t know who killed Dong Jing.”
But Chen Zheng began with someone other than Dong Jing. “Do you remember Zhu Yi?”
A ripple passed through Du Ying’s habitually calm eyes, as though some invisible force was distorting her expression.
“Do you remember Zhu Yi?” he repeated.
Du Ying drew a long, deep breath, seeming to pull herself out of her momentary paralysis. She looked down, avoiding Chen Zheng’s gaze. “Zhu Yi… yes, I knew her. She was a colleague during my internship at Yongshen Law Firm.”
“Then why didn’t you invite her to your reunion?”
Du Ying pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. She didn’t attend Lawyer He’s wedding. We lost contact with her long ago.”
“Because she married and moved to Yuanshu Township?”
The name Yuanshu Township made Du Ying shift uneasily. “You… know what happened to her in Yuanshu?”
“Only bits and pieces. That’s why I’ve just come back from Yuanshu Township to ask her former colleagues about her.” Chen Zheng placed deliberate emphasis on back.
Du Ying looked up. “You’ve already been to Yuanshu Township? Th-then is Zhu Yi all right?”
Chen Zheng shook his head. “I’m afraid she’s passed away.”
Du Ying opened her mouth, apparently trying to look shocked. “I-is that so… No wonder we haven’t heard about her for years. H-how did she die?”
“Her husband Yi Lei says she regretted staying in Yuanshu Township after giving birth and wanted to return to the city and become a lawyer. When she couldn’t, the disappointment crushed her. She began behaving recklessly, became involved with different men, and contracted an illness.”
Under the table, Du Ying’s hands clenched tightly around the fabric of her trousers.
“Did she ever ask you for help?” Chen Zheng asked. “When she went to Yuanshu Township, she was still an intern, not yet established in her career. Her social circle consisted almost entirely of classmates and fellow interns like you.”
Du Ying shook her head hastily. “I don’t know. She never called me.”
Chen Zheng paused. “Ms. Du, why are you so nervous today?”
Her gaze flickered. “Am I? Maybe I just haven’t slept well.”
“We’ll get to the truth as quickly as possible, so everyone can finally sleep soundly,” Chen Zheng said. “But that depends on you not keeping things from us.”
Du Ying’s shoulders jolted. “I really don’t know what happened after she went to Yuanshu Township! We were all surprised when she suddenly said she wanted to marry that man.”
Chen Zheng produced the photograph He Mei had given him and placed it in front of Du Ying. She glanced at it, then looked at him in confusion.
“When I first saw this, I mistook Zhu Yi for you. Then I looked toward the edge of the picture and wondered, why are there two Du Yings?”
Du Ying froze, unable to speak.
“Look. You had almost the same hairstyle,” Chen Zheng said. “Coincidence, or did one of you copy the other?”
Du Ying went pale. “It was so long ago, I don’t remember. Maybe that hairstyle was fashionable at the time.”
“When you went to Yuanshu Township to teach legal knowledge, did anything happen that made a strong impression on you?”
Du Ying lowered her head again. “It was backward. Women had very low status. They were victims, yet they resented our attempts to help them.”
“How did you try to help?”
“We didn’t manage to.”
“You didn’t?”
“They wouldn’t cooperate. No matter how hard we tried, it made no difference.”
“So you left Yuanshu Township and went to the next village?”
“Yes.”
“When did Zhu Yi begin disagreeing with the rest of you?”
“Disagreeing?” Du Ying frowned. “I wouldn’t call it that. She just suddenly said village life was beautiful too, and that a man named Lei-something treated her well. She wanted to stay.”
“Yi Lei. Did you try to persuade her otherwise?”
“Si Wei and I both did. Sh-she wouldn’t listen. She even got angry at us and said we didn’t understand her.”
“I can’t understand it either,” Chen Zheng said in a puzzled tone. “Why would she give up such a bright future to marry into a place so backward? She had the best grades among you, didn’t she? Lawyer He seemed to think very highly of her. Oh, and I saw another photograph. One of Yongshen’s senior lawyers had called her over to help with some work.”
Du Ying’s whole body grew tense. “She… went to a good school. She was very capable.”
Chen Zheng asked sharply, “If she hadn’t stayed in Yuanshu Township, would someone among you have lost their chance of being offered a permanent position?”
Sweat trickled down Du Ying’s temple. “That wouldn’t have affected me! There was more than one position!”
“I didn’t say you would be the one who didn’t get an offer.”
Du Ying froze, realizing she’d overreacted. “I… I was only explaining.”
“Isn’t it possible Zhu Yi stayed for a reason other than falling in love with Yi Lei?” Chen Zheng asked. “Perhaps she had another purpose, a plan that required her to get close to him first?”
Du Ying grew agitated. “I don’t know!”
“Perhaps she wanted to become part of the community of women in Yuanshu Township, women conditioned from childhood to accept mistreatment,” Chen Zheng said. “Idealists can make sacrifices ordinary people can’t imagine for their ideals. Perhaps Zhu Yi was one of them.”
Du Ying shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”
“If Zhu Yi really had such a plan, she might have discussed it with her companions,” Chen Zheng continued. “You were close and trusted each other. Even years later, you gathered to celebrate New Year together. If Zhu Yi were still around, perhaps she’d have joined you too?”
“No!” Du Ying sprang to her feet in panic. “She never told us anything! She just fell for Yi Lei! We all tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen!”
Her emotions were fluctuating too wildly. Chen Zheng allowed her to rest and entered another interview room. Si Wei reacted even more fiercely when confronted with similar questions. She too insisted Zhu Yi had determined to stay in Yuanshu Township, and that she and Du Ying had tried in vain to dissuade her.
“Of you, Du Ying, Zhang Pin, and Li Ren, you knew Dong Jing best, didn’t you?” Chen Zheng asked.
Si Wei had recently been taken to see Dong Jing’s body. She shuddered at his name. “I suppose so.”
“Then do you know if anything happened between Dong Jing and Zhu Yi?”
Si Wei’s eyes widened. “Officer Chen, what are you implying? I don’t understand.”
“Zhu Yi’s life changed when she went to Yuanshu Township with your group. If she hadn’t stayed behind, she wouldn’t have died of illness there,” Chen Zheng said. “And now Dong Jing has been killed, during the gathering you organized. It’s difficult not to consider the two events together.”
Si Wei was shocked. “Are you saying someone blames us for what happened to Zhu Yi, and killed Dong Jing in revenge? That’s impossible!”
“Why is it impossible?”
“Zhu Yi chose to stay! She was an adult. Were we supposed to tie her up and drag her back?” Si Wei breathed rapidly. “No. That can’t be it. You must have made a mistake.”
“Then here’s another detail,” Chen Zheng said. “Dong Jing booked Shanshui House at the end of last November. He knew long in advance that you’d be spending New Year here. But for some reason, he was murdered.”
Si Wei’s pupils contracted, and she was momentarily speechless.
“If Zhu Yi had returned to Yongshen with the rest of you, would your chance of getting a permanent position have been lower?” Chen Zheng asked.
Si Wei lost control. “What’s that got to do with me? I didn’t even want that job! I resigned of my own accord!”
In two other rooms, Li Ren and Zhang Pin were also being questioned. They’d had less contact with Zhu Yi than Si Wei and Du Ying. Still, if Zhu Yi had stayed on, Zhang Pin almost certainly wouldn’t have received an offer. Li Ren’s prospects for an offer wouldn’t have changed much, though his ranking would have. Neither man reacted naturally to Zhu Yi’s name. Like Si Wei and Du Ying, both were hiding something.
Asked about Dong Jing’s relationship with Zhu Yi, Li Ren suddenly said, “Actually, the first person Dong Jing pursued was Zhu Yi.”
As Dong Jing’s former roommate, Li Ren knew him better than the others. Dong Jing came from a relatively well-off family and was good-looking. He’d already dated several women in university.
Dong Jing, Du Ying, and Zhu Yi were the first to arrive as interns at Yongshen. Dong Jing wasn’t interested in Du Ying, who was cold and reserved. Instead, he focused his attention on Zhu Yi, repeatedly showing her affection. But Zhu Yi devoted herself to work and ignored his signals. Dong Jing found the rejection so frustrating that even after he began pursuing Si Wei, he complained to Li Ren that Zhu Yi didn’t know how to respond to a man’s interest.
“I think Dong Jing only told me about it,” Li Ren said. “The others didn’t know.”
Did they really not know? Chen Zheng wondered. Du Ying, at least, ought to have noticed. There’d been only three interns at the time; she could have seen it for herself. Given her relationship with Si Wei, would she have told her?
“Dong Jing…” Si Wei glared at Chen Zheng. “I didn’t know he went after Zhu Yi! And what does that have to do with me? Dong Jing and I never even got together!”
“Du Ying never told you?”
Si Wei reacted fiercely. “No! She isn’t someone who gossips!”
But after a long silence, Du Ying nodded. “I may have let it slip. That was my fault. Si Wei was probably starting to fall for Dong Jing. If she hadn’t known he’d pursued Zhu Yi, they might have ended up together.”
Chen Zheng looked at the relationship diagram on the evidence wall. Cracks were beginning to form among the four of them. Li Ren had been the first to expose one. Du Ying had admitted it after some hesitation. Only Si Wei continued denying it.
Why? Because the information was unimportant to Li Ren and Du Ying, but extremely important to Si Wei. Or at least she believed it was.
Chen Zheng narrowed his eyes, considering the implications. If Si Wei knew that Dong Jing had pursued Zhu Yi, what would follow? And what would follow if she didn’t?
The next round of interviews began. This time, Chen Zheng let Li Shu conduct the questioning while he watched from a monitor. Dong Jing died between the evening of the eighteenth and early morning of the nineteenth. The four returned to Shanshui House after their lamb hotpot dinner at half past nine. All of them had the opportunity to act.
Du Ying claimed she’d spent the afternoon walking in the mountains and was exhausted. After returning to the guesthouse, she took a shower and went to sleep. She checked the time before bed: it was only ten.
Si Wei was the opposite. She stayed awake using her phone and didn’t go to sleep until after two in the morning.
Both insisted they’d stayed in their rooms, but because they shared a suite with two bedrooms and a living room, each could close her own door. Neither could prove the other hadn’t gone out.
Li Ren gave an account similar to Du Ying’s. He too said he went to bed early.
Zhang Pin played cards downstairs with other guests until after one in the morning. When he went back upstairs, the lights were off and he was alone in the suite.
The available evidence had narrowed suspicion to the group. This so-called New Year gathering appeared to have been a conspiracy planned well in advance. Chen Zheng’s gaze settled on Zhu Yi’s photograph. What had really happened when she stayed behind in Yuanshu Township?
Meanwhile, after Chen Zheng left for Junan City, Xie Wuming and Xu Chuan went to the Yi home in Yuanshu Township.
Aqiong was working in the courtyard, with the child shuffling around her in a baby walker. Her expression was blank. No matter how much the child got in the way, she simply moved him aside again and again, showing neither patience nor irritation.
Hearing a noise from outside, she straightened and saw Xie Wuming. Xie wasn’t wearing her institute uniform. She wore ordinary casual clothes: a dark green sweatshirt, a white down vest, her hair tied loosely in a ponytail, and white sneakers with gold stripes.
Such clothes were commonplace in Zhuquan City, but women in Yuanshu Township didn’t dress like that. Aqiong stared, a glimmer finally appearing in her lifeless eyes.
Yi Lei’s mother emerged, grumbling, and immediately became wary when she saw the strangers. Xie Wuming asked, “Where’s Yi Lei? I need to speak to him.”
An officer from Gezi Town Police Station had accompanied them and called for Yi Lei in the local dialect. His mother prepared to throw another tantrum, but Xie Wuming wasn’t having it. She headed straight into the house to find him. The old woman lunged at her, but Xu Chuan was young and quick. He stepped in front of Xie Wuming, looking very imposing. “Hey, Granny! We’re investigating a case. What do you think you’re doing? Trying to attack an officer?”
Yi Lei came out of his study. Seeing so many visitors, he frowned. “Didn’t we explain everything yesterday?”
“When did you explain everything?” Xie Wuming was full of unanswered questions. She wasn’t merely a researcher. She had been Zhu Yi’s senior at university, and thinking of Zhu Yi dying in this place made it hard to control her anger. “You said Zhu Yi was buried in your family’s ancestral graves. Why couldn’t we find her?”
Yi Lei looked Xie Wuming up and down, realizing that this female officer was much more confrontational than the male officer who’d come the day before.
“Take us to see,” Xie Wuming said. “I have a few more questions.”
Yi Lei clearly didn’t want to, but there were too many officers present. He forced a smile. “Then let’s go.”
Villagers gathered, and Xie Wuming felt their hostile stares all along the way. Among them were several women in their thirties. They watched her with dull eyes, though she thought something else lingered beneath that numbness. Whenever she looked back, they quickly turned away, seemingly afraid to meet her gaze.
On reaching the burial hill, Xie Wuming realized Aqiong had been following them all along. From a distance, the young woman was so thin that she resembled a twig on the hillside, ready to snap in the wind.
Yi Lei chatted with the local officers, repeatedly insisting he was a law-abiding citizen. They looked uncomfortable. “Tell the leader from the province.”
Yi Lei looked toward Xie Wuming. She pointed at a row of gravestones. “Where is Zhu Yi?”
Yi Lei muttered agreement and led them through the graves, eventually reaching the back of the hill. There stood a lonely gravestone, without even a name carved into it.
“This is the place?” Xie Wuming raised her voice. “Didn’t you say you’d buried her with your Yi ancestors?”
Yi Lei drew his hands in awkwardly. Zhu Yi, he explained, had never formally married into the Yi family. And she’d done such shameful things afterward that, even if he’d wanted to bury her in the ancestral plot, the ancestors would never have accepted it. He’d tried everything before managing to bury her here. Though it wasn’t the family graveyard, he always visited her when he came to offer incense to his ancestors. In his eyes, that amounted to a generous burial.
His voice was full of self-congratulation, as though giving Zhu Yi an isolated, unmarked grave were a great act of kindness.
“Did Zhu Yi ever mention me to you?” Xie Wuming suddenly asked. “I was her senior at university. We used to be close.”
Yi Lei froze. His gaze changed at once. “You…”
“When she wanted to put her life back on track, did she ever think of asking me for help?”
“Well…” Yi Lei said. “She felt too ashamed to contact any of you. You were all doing well, and she felt inferior.”
“When did she delete my contact details?”
Yi Lei knew nothing. “Officer Xie, I genuinely don’t know.”
Xie Wuming looked toward Aqiong, standing in the distance. “You found a new wife awfully quickly.”
Yi Lei rubbed his hands. “I’m getting old. If I didn’t marry, people would gossip.”
“By the way, there’s someone else I wanted to ask about. Do you know Mei Rui?” Xie Wuming’s gaze sharpened. Yi Lei instinctively glanced toward the local officer.
The officer supplied the context. “There was that incident in your village a few years ago, remember? Mei Rui’s parents came and took her home.”
“Oh, I remember now,” Yi Lei said. He’d seen Mei Rui but never spoken to her. She was the Li family’s daughter-in-law, and later, for reasons he didn’t know, she no longer lived in the village.
“You don’t know why?” Xie Wuming asked. “Then why have I heard she was trafficked into your village?”
Yi Lei waved his hands in alarm. “You can’t say something like that without proof! The Li family married her properly!”
“Did Zhu Yi know her?”
Yi Lei shook his head. “Maybe they exchanged a few words, that’s all.”